The Arizona sentinel., 1887-09-24
LEARNING TO SWIM.
An Important Accomplishment That
 Should Be Acquired by Everybody.

An Important Accomplishment That
 Should Be Acquired by Everybody.
 Learning to swim requires intellect nal as well as physical effort; the form CT is rarely used, and the consequence is that it sometimes takes months, and often years, to learn. The great trouble in learning is the nervousness that every one feels at first about get ting the head under water, and all ef- forts are used in keeping the head out. The experience of the writer in teach ing boys to swim has convinced him that this is wrong. A good swimmer should be able to swim under water as well as at the surface. and the first step in learning should be to get ac- customed to having the head under water. The learner should at first have all fear taken away. and then the rest is easy. The writer has taught quite a number of boys to swim, and in many cases they have learned at the very first time trying. His method is as follows: Take the learner into the water, clear water if it can be found, about waist deep, so that he knows that he can recover his footing at any time he chooses. The first effort should be to hold the breath and submerge the face, keeping the eyes open, or better still, if he can do it at first, submerge the whole head. This should be prac- ticed until no difficulty is experienced in keeping the eyes open, and exclud- ing the water from the mouth and nose, and until all nervousness is gone. There need be no fear of injury to the eyes or ears. Then the learner should select an object, say fifteen feet away, plunge boldly under the water. and make the best of his way to it by swim ming under water with his eyes open, and fixed upon the point selected. In almost all cases, his mind being re- lieved from fear, he will instinctively adopt the methods calculated to accom- plish the end desired, while, on the other hand, a nervous effort to keep the head out of water fixes the mind upon that alone, and the effort is made in that direction, rather than in learn ing to swim.
 Some instruction in making the stroke, however, should be given. The finger ends should be brought to- gether at the breast with the thumbs side by side between the palms of the hands and level with their upper edge; with the hands in this position, the arms should be extended to their full length, when the backs of the hands should be rolled inward. bring ing the thumbs down, until the backs form the letter V, the thumbs being back to back and the edges of the forefngers touching. The learner is now in position for making the most important movement in learning to swim, and this is made by sweeping the extended arms and "dishing" hands rapidly around until they touch the sides, when they should again be brought to the breast ready for an- other stroke. There are few readers who have not seen the movement of the frog in the water, and the aim should be to initiate it in the move ment of the legs In the recovering stroke the movement should be slow; that of the propeling stroke rapid by comparison.
 Only about two and one-half pounds of lifting force, in addition to the buoyancy of the body, is required to hold the head entirely out of the water. 70. Guthrie, in Chicago Herald